Thread: Gumbo Roux
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  #12   ^
Old Fri, Feb-09-18, 06:21
Meetow Kim Meetow Kim is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 166
 
Plan: Atkins Concept
Stats: 225/190/175 Male 70.5"
BF:
Progress: 70%
Location: Central Virginia
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Thanks Verbina,

Yes, I'm a bit hard-headed once I set my mind to something. One of the things going low carb has depressed me about is I spent the last several years really honing my cooking skills. Of course thats why my wife and I got so fat!

Fortunately as has been mentioned to me before, those skills can prove helpful in getting around the limitations of low carb cooking. My results have been mediocre to good. Unfortunately with certain foods, white flour and sugars are the key. I never did use a lot of sugar, but in some cases its what pushes a recipe to the perfect level. Same with bleached flour...yeast rolls, biscuits...I have always not preferred brown/whole grain flour products becasue they tend to sweeten bread. Same thing with brown rice and pastas. Just not the same. But going forward, if I do splurge on white flour pasta, I'll go back to making it myself which is a totally different level of pasta. I just love a good Naan bread dredged in really good olive oil or some fresh crusty artisanal bread torn in to pieces and straight in my face!

My wife will love that Beef Rendang! Shes loves the anise/licorice and cinnamon, etc. flavors. The challenge with that recipe is like cleaning out and restocking the pantry for low carb life, some of the ingredients are bit exotic for the average kitchen, but I've worked with them all. I threw out my block of tamarind paste after years. The Tamarind may be a bit high carb anyway and after working with it several times I didn't find what it added was worth the effort...some fresh lime and a pinch of brown sugar did the same thing very easily for my palette. I've also always thought keffir lime leaves were a little overrated. I've even had them snipped fresh for me by a wonderful old Thai lady who grows her own keffir lime tree right in her restaurant. When she found out I was learning Thai cooking, she snipped off some to take home, then walked me through her garden out back to snip some Thai basil and other herbs and dug up and sent me home with a few Thai hot pepper plants! I still have some of those Thai Hot Peppers in my freezer, I use them in jars of cucumber pickles for spice. They are almost too hot for anything else...and that's saying a lot because I like my food to make me sweat!

I have since resorted to using canned and jarred curry pastes. They are good and I simply have never matched their flavor. I know when I am beat, but I will always try first! Curry simply means sauce or gravy...I posted in another thread here about that. The Brits created curry powder and a lot of people think if it doesn't taste like that, its not curry. The Asian markets where stuff like boneless beef short ribs and affordable lemongrass are more available in my region of the U.S., sell a variety of curry pastes for different flavors. Its what I use for my Thai Red Curry which I have gotten near perfect held up against the authentic stuff in restaurants like the one that aforementioned Thai Lady (drawing a blank on her name at the moment) made for my wife and I. I'm sure they have something that will match up to the flavor profile of this Beef Rendang.

So here's a try suggested from Meme#1 at posting pics using Tinypic:

This was the roux



This is the finished gumbo. We had already taken out some nice bowlful's when it occurred to me to take the pic!



Like I had written before, it was really good, but not a direct replacement for white flour's flavor. I do plan to try almond flour. I'm just taking it step by step. Stocking a low carb kitchen can be expensive! But, if I find the right replacements for certain things, it will help to maintain weight once I hit my goal. I'll be less likely to go back and use those higher carb things if I accomplish a consistent good result with certain recipes.

Thanks to Meme#1 for the the suggestion of Tinypic. Others had suggested similar stuff and I just didn't want to go through the steps. This was not too hard...I just have to realize I'm dealing with an old site with limited storage. I have to be sure to reduce my pics for this method, the first attempt had the images huge! Great resolution but you had to use the browser slider bars to read and see everything.
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